Tuesday, May 24, 2005

Ain’t no Fog in this War! – The Heathens of Shaw Episode 3

Thanks for all the advice and the volunteering of several hack saws. A bitch doesn’t even want to know what you naughty boys are doing with those up in your cribs.

A bitch and her sister attended a Neighborhood Association meeting.

Drama! If you want to feel better about your situation just take your ass to one of these meetings. Shaw is an up & coming neighborhood in the Lou and some of these folks lived through serious shit while the up was coming. The good thing is that no one made us feel like assholes for taking this issue on. Rather, like y'all said, they reinforced that this was an incident in the making.

We left the meeting with Activist Lady, who wanted to drive by the house and see if she knew any of the heathens. She knew two of them and chatted for a bit, but they felt confident in their right to be behind our house raising hell. My sister directed me to make the first phone call to the police, as directed by the Shaw neighborhood ladies.

I picked up the phone and War commenced.

The first skirmishes of War are often slow in their build up. A nice Officer rolled up on our house and we gave him the details. He clearly had heard this shit before, asked us what we wanted to happen and drove around back.

The first Battle of the Bitch versus the Heathens was on!

The waiting was excruciating. My stomach was in knots! After an hour the Officer called us back.

“I dispersed the Heathens. Your neighbor pulled up and I informed him of the problem. I didn’t tell him who called in the complaint, but did tell him that he would only get so many before his home would be classified as a “Nuisance House”. He denied knowing that there was a problem. He stated that the Heathens were always well behaved. I told him that his neighbors felt otherwise and that he should take action. I then had the Heathens give me their phone numbers and called their parents to come pick their asses up from behind this house. They did and the kids are gone. Just give me a call if this continues to be a problem.”

Unbelievable! This fucker actually tried to spin these bad assed heathens as a bunch of alter boys just trying to have fun! Not aware that it was a problem? What the fuck?

The entire incident was a case study in assholes and the lies they tell themselves!

I wrapped this shit up just in time to catch the Patty Hearst documentary on PBS (thank you, Oh fantabulous Thurman)!

A bitch may have to call the police again over this shit, but I know that the assholes next door are finally experiencing a dose of the drama I’ve been going through since they moved in. Fucker was outside pacing at 7:30am! Oh, how I love the sound of agitation in the morning...

8 comments:

Perhaps your obtuse neighbor will get the message that it is FAR better to retain good relations with you than with some fucking brats who are using his ass for a free basketball court. When something pops up (locked out of house; needs permission for contractors to bring materials through your backyard), it would behoove these motherfuckers to not have annoyed the fuck out of you.

It's a damn foolish adult who prioritizes the needs of kids over other grown folks. Must've never been around my "kids are to be seen, not heard" grandma. Let one of my neighbors have made even the slightest peep about my behavior during childhood; no adult within a ten-block radius wouldn't have whooped my ass, then told my family so my ass could get whooped some more. Much less letting a child continuously disturb an adult! This world is quickly deteriorating...

You know, my last semester undergrad I shared a split level with two girls. The apartment upstairs was rented by two bouncy blondes that I will stereotypically refer to Becky and Mandy (there is a reason for this, trust me). The house was only two blocks away from the coveted St. Charles Street car line, but our neighborhood was affectionately referred to as "Little Beirut". Well, since we were the only house in the immediate area with a pool, the neighborhood heathens decided it was their right to hop the fence and have a swim as they pleased. Becky and Mandy routinely let that shit go on, I guess because they didn't want to be the obnoxious, mean white people who wouldn't let the kids have any fun. Forget the fact that if something happened on that property we would have liable. One day when I was there alone, four boys and one girl went for a dip. I listened to their convo., and three of the guys were telling the girl and the last guy that they needed to go ahead and do it. Do what? Oh, yeah, fuck in my pool. SO I called the cops. Fools tried to runaway by hopping the fence which they broke in the process. The cop took the girl home and let the boys go. About an hour later her mother rolled around to tell me that wouldn't be happening again because she kicked her out. Whoa! I got a 16 year old kicked out. Felt kinda badly about that, until I thought about that other thing that happened.

There was a little party going on in the pool one day. Becky and Mandy were the gracious but unpresent hostesses. Yep, the rowdy ass black kids with no home training were tearing up the back yard while one of the bouncy blondes took an afternoon nap. Well, one of these fools walked up to her door which she left open. Right! Well, old boy walked in, grabbed a knife, her car keys, beer and her cigs. and rolled out. Yeah, he was driving around the N.O. with his boys, in her car, drinking her beer and smoking her cigs. Brilliant.

I totally understand. There is nothing more dangerous than undisciplined, unsupervised kids running around doing whatever they like. Fuckers could kill you and would likely only be sent to a juvenile detention center. Becky or Mandy, whichever one it was, could have been raped or worse. That paternalistic, patting the head of the uncivilized heathen under the guise of the "hey, I'm a cool, fun, understanding and non judgemental white person" annoys the fuck out of me. Those fools need to be beaten like Harpo.

It's shit like this that make me breathe a little sigh of relief at my struggles to conceive. Lordy--what a nightmare, to think someone actually carried that trash in their bellies for 9-nearly-10 months! Heartbreaking!

"I totally understand. There is nothing more dangerous than undisciplined, unsupervised kids running around doing whatever they like."

Thank you!!! What the fuck are people thinking? Where are the grown folks? You can be potentially liable for what invited, unsupervised kids do on your property. Letting kids run wild is a lawsuit waiting to happen, not to mention a danger to the children themselves. One of my biggest pet peeves is adults who don't know how to raise some fucking kids! The belt and the switch were instruments of love and protection...

I totally agree with TigerLilly calling this out as the paternalism it is. The crazy neighbor EXPECTS this behavior -- otherwise, he'd be angry. He thinks he's doing them a big favor like they've never seen a basketball hoop before. The reason sistahs are particularly offended by their behavior is that we KNOW they know better -- they're hustling him and disrespecting us. The 14 year old I mentor can act just as rough as the heathens out back. But mighty funny how she can pull it together when it's time to hang out with me. She can do it because she knows better ... and so do they. They know right from wrong. Bill Cosby was right about standards and the fact that our failure to enforce the standards our grandmammas had is revealed at the bus stop at 2:30 every day.

Great post as always ABB. Unknot your gut -- St. Louis' finest will finish raising the grown man next door and finish parenting the heathens. And we can work with Miss B. to get the afterschool basketball program re-opened so they have positive options.